Tag Archives: cousins

2024 – A Review

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Well, here we are at the end of another year. Like most years, this one has had its ups and downs, highs and lows.

There has been overseas travel and renovations at home.

Sad farewells to friends and family members who have left us far too soon.

Catching up and celebrating with extended family – siblings and cousins.

Regular routines and out of the ordinary adventures.

Living in a location with 4 distinct seasons and lots of deciduous trees clearly defines the seasonal cycle through the year. I appreciate the seasonal changes and cherish the special aspects such as savouring seasonal produce when it is at its best.

We will be spending New Year’s Eve with family but I suspect we may all be in bed well in advance of midnight.

Resolutions are not really something that I do but I am keen to work on some key principles and encourage others to do likewise as we move into 2025. Things like kindness, gratitude, sharing, empathy and community spring to mind. Nothing too big or exciting but simply woven into every day and making a difference to our own and other people’s lives.

I love this image and have used it each year on the blog for a few years as I like to think of the waves gently washing away the year and leaving us with a blank page ready to write the story of the upcoming year. I think it is a better reflection of my attitude to the New Year than fireworks and popping champagne corks.

I would like to close this post by thanking each and every one of you for your interest which encourages to continue writing this blog after almost 14 years.

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2025.

Live Life

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This blog is not about my life laid bare for all the world to see.  However, I have alluded to the fact that I have been very busy recently so tonight I wanted to share a little of that with you.

About 10 days ago I was part of a gathering of my extended family.  Like many families, sometimes it seems as though the only times we connect with cousins and others beyond our immediate family is at funerals.  Some months ago I came up with the idea of gathering on the centenary of our grandfather’s arrival at Gallipoli.  He was not in the first contingent of Australian forces who landed on 25th April but was in some of the reinforcements who arrived in mid-July.  A series of events led to him meeting his future wife (our grandmother) in England, and so, our branch of the family grew and flourished.

After much anticipation, family members gathered from near and far for a day of celebration and reminiscing.  The weather was kind, memories were shared and connections rekindled.  We had an amazing day.

2015-07-22 01I think this photograph captured the essence of the day perfectly.

Some Random Stuff

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There is no real theme to this post – hence the title.

A couple of years ago I wrote this post about the highs and lows of social media.  One of the wonders of it is the ability to easily connect with family and friends.  Today I have spent some time setting up a group for my cousins and other extended family.  This will allow us to keep in touch across vast distances and generations.  The catalyst was a seed of an idea to organise a get-together on the centenary of our grandfather’s arrival at Gallipoli.  He was not with the first landing on April 25th 1915 but it was significant for our family as a sequence of events that followed this led to him spending time in England where he met his future wife (our grandmother).  I already have feedback from far and wide which simply would not have been possible without Facebook.

As I was taught at school – “new thought, new paragraph”………

The decluttering continues – I have a small bag of a few more things that will be leaving the sewing room.  I generally keep a plastic supermarket bag on the bag of the door in the sewing room and add anything that I find and then drop it off to the op shop when the bag is full.  I also have 2 small cartons of books which we sorted from the bookshelves last month.  They have been sitting on the floor next to the bookcases waiting for me to get organised and find a new home for them.  I have listed them on a couple of local buy/swap/sell sites as well as Freecycle but if I don’t get a taker by the end of the weekend I think they will be going to the op shop as well.  It is a difficult task to balance the desire to have things gone and not hanging around, against finding the perfect home for them.  How do you manage this conundrum when decluttering?

I have also set up a ‘Decluttering’ tab at the top of my blog.  Check it out if you are interested.

Finally, I just wanted to share these couple of photos with you today.  In my next life, I think I will be a dog………….

004or maybe, a cat!

003These photos were taken at about 4.30pm and the cat has been on that chair ALL DAY!

The weather is not looking fabulous here – in fact it is pouring with rain and blowing a gale so I am not sure what the weekend will bring.  I hope you have a fabulous weekend wherever you are.